Saturday, January 28, 2012

Or, at least, at South Pacific Pix they tell me that the script is being written ...

Yes, I am talking about Island of the Lost, the castaway story that has brought me a lot of fans.

Today I received one of those neat letters, this one from Queensland, Australia.

Hi Joan,

I am writing to tell you how much I thoroughly enjoyed reading "Island of the lost"

It was inspiring and I couldn't put it down. I was so enthralled by the imagery and the language you employed so seamlessly, that I was able to conjure up in my minds eye, the most vivid of images. Have you ever thought about having this masterpiece made into a motion picture? Couldn't you just imagine someone like Peter Jackson directing such an offering? With todays wonderful technology, it is possible to create almost any scene imaginable and I can imagine that your telling of this amazing story would be treated with great respect. Nothing needs to be changed and I think it is capable of being turned into a cinematic masterpiece.

Just had to say that, and would help in any way possible to make it happen.

Fantstic stuff Joan, and I would love to see this story told on the big screen.

Nick Gane

Thanks, Nick, and many thanks for the permission to publish your great letter on my blog

One million titles sold in just one year
As usual, I had a scan through the NYT bestsellers list (print and eBooks) looking for self-published successes on the level of Chan and Hocking, but found only two, today. One was Darcie Chan's Mill River Recluse, which I am pleased to see still doing so well. The other was a new name to me.

Barbara Freethy

A writer who has published with Simon & Schuster (she is still on their website) and other major houses, she has taken her backlist titles after reversion of rights, and published them herself, with dramatic success.

Unlike most independently published authors, who kick off sales by asking just $0.99, Freethy priced her books between $2.99 and $5.99. Nonetheless, they sold extremely well, to the tune of 1,000,000 in just one year.

Over the past twelve months, eight of Freethy's seventeen self-published titles have hit the New York Times and/or USA Today Bestseller List.

In a word, she made gold in books that had been taking up space in her closet. Having a following already would have helped a lot, but still it is amazing.

According to Theresa Horner, VP Content B&N Digital Products, "Barbara Freethy's self-publishing success proves that digitizing books can boost readership and breathe new life into older titles. Her backlist titles through PubIt!, Barnes & Noble's fast and free digital self-publishing platform, have consistently landed her at the top of the BN.com eBook list. We're thrilled for Barbara and we look forward to helping her sell the next million!"

She is traditionally published, too, currently being with Pocket. However, Freethy is planning to self-publish e-book originals in the future. "I am excited about the opportunity to not only make all of my books available again, but also to publish new works more frequently, allowing me to better respond to the demands of my readers."

Freethy's books are sold through online retailers Barnes and Noble, Amazon, Apple, Sony and Kobo. They are also distributed through Smashwords and Overdrive to libraries and other online retailers.

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Country icon Dolly Parton refused to let Elvis Presley record her hit song I Will Always Love You because she didn't want to give up the publishing rights to the track.

The 9 to 5 singer reveals The King was a big fan of her 1970s tune and was set to head into the studio to lay down his vocals when his formidable manager, 'Colonel' Tom Parker, demanded Parton surrender her entitlement to the single's royalties.

But Parton tells US journalist Anderson Cooper she knew the financial sacrifice was too much just to have one of her tracks covered by Presley.

"Elvis was gonna record that song, he had it ready and 'Colonel' Tom Parker says, 'We have to have the publishing, or we won't record anything.' I said, 'I can't do that!' He wanted half the publishing (rights)! ...It wasn't Elvis' fault, it was Colonel Parker."

Parton admits she "cried about it" after rejecting the deal, but she struck gold in 1992 when Whitney Houston's version of the track topped charts around the world.

"Then when Whitney did it, I got all the money for the publishing and for the writing and I bought a lot of cheap wigs... with that!"

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Some books haunt the reader. Others haunt the writer. The Handmaid's Tale has done both.

It has never been out of print. It has been made into a film, and adapted for opera. For some, it has become a synonym for the repression of women. It has been admired and reviled. And it's a book that haunts the writer.

Using the diary she kept at the time, Margaret Atwood reflects on the extraordinary effect The Handmaid's Tale has had on the world and herself.

Thursday, January 19, 2012

Can you imagine the self-absorbed feline having kitten-competition in the home?

Well, it happened, and it has been turned into a book, to follow a rash of great new Simon's Cat cartoons on YouTube.

And the book had its launch in a cinema

The great event took place at the Prince Charles cinema in Leicester Square, London. Special invitations were sent out to competition winners from the Simon's Cat website, as well as winners from the Daily Mirror newspaper.

Predictably, the entertainment was firstclass, with a "Double Trouble" cartoon shown on the big screem, and lots of input from the cartoonist (and cat owner) himself.

And naturally, a video of the book launch was produced. You can view it HERE

"Yes, I know it’s perfect in its way," he writes. "Nothing beats British television drama for servicing the instincts of cultural necrophilia. So the series is fabulously frocked, and acted, and overacted, and hyper-overacted by all the Usual Suspects in keeping with their allotted roles. There’s Carson, the beetle-browed butler. (My favorite in the endless parade of butlerian clichés was Rabbits, the butler in H. G. Wells’s hymn of hate to the lordly house, Tono-Bungay.) Maggie Smith does her tungsten-corseted, eye-rolling, nostril-curling, glottal-gurgle as only she can—half Lady Bracknell, half Queen Mary (the unfailingly erect consort of King George V). Julian Fellowes has gotten this stuff down pat since writing Gosford Park, though all the main plot lines were anticipated a long time ago by Upstairs, Downstairs."

Well, you get the drift by now. But for some marvellously passionate, well crafted prose, read the restHERE.

In the past, Julian Fellowes has neglected the golden rule of writers -- never, ever respond to an unfavorable review -- and snapped right back.

Responding to people who accused the show of using anachronistic language and etiquette, he declared, "The real problem is with people who are insecure socially, and they think to show how smart they are by picking holes in the programme to promote their own poshness and to show that their knowledge is greater than your knowledge."

Oh my. One can only wait for his reaction to this latest scathing commentary.

He should relax. Let's face it, for all its shortcomings, its lack of originality, and its stereotyped themes, Downton Abbey is incredibly addictive.

The world most celebrated and beloved kitty, Hello Kitty, brings her delightful charm and culinary ideas straight into the kitchen on the iPad with the new Hello Kitty Digital Cookbook for children. This app is the 2nd digital cookbook released by Castle Builders as part of its unique lineup of digital books for children.

Gili says the next step is interactive eBooks for adults. As a life-long booklover, this has given me a great deal to mull over, and friends have also contributed their thoughts and doubts on facebook (http://www.facebook.com/#!/druettjo). I can envisage the magic of having videos and sound effects attached to travel books, for instance. But, somehow, the thought of reading a novel on iPad or iPhone doesn't seem natural. What would be the advantages?

I suspect that before the year is out we will be getting interactive prospectuses from all kinds of forward-looking business people.

When I was searching for images for Tupaia, Captain Cook's Polynesian Navigator, I got great pleasure from the many beautiful old charts I found. The map reproduced above was particularly intriguing, because it provided an excellent illustration of how little the old Pacific explorers knew, compared to Polynesian ocean lore.

Engraved by Pieter Goos for his book De zee-atlas ofte water-wereld (Amsterdam, 1667), this "sea-chart" has to be viewed sideways, with California invisibly off to the bottom right, and what little was known of Tasmania ("Van Diemen's Land") and New Zealand hovering about to the top left. Otherwise, the ocean is almost empty -- not Tahiti, no Samoa, no Tonga, no Fiji -- and yet it was drawn for the use of seagoing folk, such as captains, sailing masters, and trading agents, who intended to venture into this unknown region.

Pieter Goos was the son of Abraham Goos, an Amsterdam bookseller who specialized in maps and charts. As well as carrying on his father's business, Pieter produced pilot guides for mariners. His Zee-atlas was a bestseller, going through many editions.

No one, however, kept count of the number of travelers it sent to a watery grave.

I was reminded of this when the captain of the unfortunate Costa Concordia reckoned his ship hit an uncharted rock.

Is such a thing possible today? Maritime historian Bill Bunting contributed a useful and entertaining comment that demonstrates that even relatively recently all charts were not equal:

Forty-plus years ago I was the mate of a sailing vessel engaged on aworld voyage (he says). Previous owners had outfitted her chart locker withBritish, German, and US charts for many Pacific island areas. TheBritish charts were aesthetically the most beautiful, as elaboratelyengraved as old bank notes, and imparting more than a whiff ofempire, except that, with no colors, it was often not easy to figureout where the water ended and the land began. Lines of soundings werelikely to be attributed to the HMS PINAFORE or whatever a hundred ormore years ago, although presumably these were better than nothing.

The German charts were by far the most detailed, especially regardingfeatures of the land, except that it appeared that many of the islandhills and valleys were boilerplate added to fill in spaces which ifleft blank might suggest less than complete and thorough knowledge.

The US charts were the most utilitarian, and did not hesitate todisplay ignorance when appropriate. With an obvious color schemedifferentiating land from water, they were the easiest to use andthus the charts of choice, even though they projected all the romanceof a gas station road map.

Earth scientists studying the after-effects of last year’s Japan earthquake, registering a 10 on the Richter scale, have discovered that the shifting continental plates have tilted the earth a little further on its axis. The result is a tiny, but measurable, alteration in time, distance and position in space.

According to New Zealand website SunLive, the news that the earth has moved didn’t surprise Tauranga resident Minnie Driver, who claims that her recent accident on Cameron Road was a direct result of her sat-nav being suddenly inaccurate.

“It’s been fine for ages, but since the earthquake it keeps telling me to turn about 25 metres before I get to the junction I want. True, I’ve met some interesting people, and surprised a few who were sweeping their drives, but this is clearly a new problem. I’ve spoken to makers Tom Tom, but they have investigated and blame lunchtime drinking. That’s scandalous, and probably only partly true.”

Other supposedly incompetent drivers have now come forward, and been joined by numerous other GPS users including trampers & boaties, many of whom have been hopelessly lost and branded as ‘stupid’ by emergency service staff.

They claim that GPS systems haven’t accounted for the shift in Earth’s position.

The captain of the Costa Concordia has claimed that the rock wasn’t on his chart.

It's also a cookbook -- but that is not what makes it different, either.

It's an eCookbook for Kids that's absolutely packed with apps.

But still that's not the difference.

The difference is that it's linked to a highly publicized film.

Somehow, I thought the ultimate eBook would be a dazzling production involving exotic travel, exotic animals, or classic art. Never did I expect that it would be an eCookbook for children that not only entices them to turn cooking into a family experience, but encourages them to read.

And it didn't ever cross my mind that it would be designed to accompany the release of a motion picture.

Creators of children's programs for TV and cinema are always keen to find ways to extend their marketing -- content that will make extra money out of creative licensing. That's why bookstores go in for potentially profitable sidelines, such a stationery decorated with the latest cartoon characters, "Hello Kitty" and "Angry Birds" being a couple of the latest. And that's why giant animation firms like DreamWorks are always on the lookout for innovative ideas that lead to yet more exposure for their films.

That's what led DreamWorks to a 16-strong team of creative programmers in Israel, called Castle-Builders, which has provided just what they are looking for -- an interactive cookbook, to accompany the release of Kung Fu Panda 2. And, if they were looking for innovation, that's exactly what they got. (I particularly like the truly imaginative trick of shaking the tablet to get a random recipe.)

This is definitely not a children's book the way I know it. In fact, it is so far away from traditional children's print books that it's a different form of literature entirely.

So, how did it come about?

It began back in 2006, when 25-year-old Gili Abramovich, armed with a MBA degree from Israel's Colman College School of Business, and expertise in software development gained during his stint of military service, founded Castle-Builders. This was a time when touch screen interactivity was science fiction territory, well before iPad, iPhone and Android, and yet Abramovich had dreams that he was determined to turn into reality.

"Ever since I can remember I used to have ideas that I wanted to explore," he says. "I used to write them in a notebook; the digital book was simply the first I picked up and did something about. I felt that there was a trend and I just followed my instincts. That brought me to the unique position we are in today - having our product highly interactive and compatible with the iPad, Android, Nook, PC and the Mac."

Interviewed via the miracle of the internet, his enthusiasm is almost palpable. "As a kid, when reading a book, I was always waiting for the photo to come up every 4 pages," he confides. "That was why I thought that kids would love having an image on every single page - and since images simply do not cut it any more, I felt that every page should offer videos and animations. I wanted to create a whole world around every story, one that pulls the child into the story and keeps him mesmerized."

He calls it "a backdoor" way of getting children reading.

Perhaps he should call it a "kitchen door" way, because it gets them cooking, too.

Monday, January 16, 2012

Common sense should tell you that those gorgeous blokes and girls splashed over billboards and magazines are not nearly so pretty in reality.

Let's face it, it has always happened. Cleopatra bathed in ass's milk, and arrived attired in fetchingly flattering costumes. In the early days of cinema, actors and actresses beginning to show their years were photographed through cheesecloth. Makeup artists were deft at covering up blemishes.

Photoshopping has taken this art to a whole new level, and there is scientific evidence out there that proves that it is bad for the health of many people. While most merely wince when a glimpse in the mirror compares unfavorably with the cover of the latest mag, there are some who become so driven by a bad self-image that they develop life-threatening dietary problems, or embark on risky surgery.

Now, two American computer scientists, Prof. Eric Kee and his grad student, Hany Farid, have developed a program that could be used to alert readers to the amount of photoshopping involved in pictures -- rather like the lists of ingredients and their calorific content that are printed on food packages.

Their paper, A Perceptual Metric for Photo Retouching, begins with this abstract:

In recent years, advertisers and magazine editors have been widely criticized for taking digital photo retouching to an extreme. Impossibly thin, tall, and wrinkle- and blemish-free models are routinely splashed onto billboards, advertisements, and magazine covers.

The ubiquity of these unrealistic and highly idealized images has been linked to eating disorders and body image dissatisfaction in men, women, and children. In response, several countries have considered legislating the labeling of retouched photos.

We describe a quantitative and perceptually meaningful metric of photo retouching. Photographs are rated on the degree to which they have been digitally altered by explicitly modeling and estimating geometric and photometric changes. This metric correlates well with perceptual judgments of photo retouching and can be used to objectively judge by how much a retouched photo has strayed from reality.

Sunday, January 15, 2012

A group of Indian hackers has offered support to an American man, James Gross, who has filed a lawsuit against Symantec Corp.

A spokesman for the group, which is known as "Lords of Dharmaraja," released more than 13,000 files that were part of the product's source code from a 2006 version of Norton Utilities, a software program at the heart of the legal dispute.

"Pass it on to forensics and win the lawsuit," YamaTough said via Twitter.

The proposed class-action lawsuit claims that Symantec seeks to convince consumers to buy Norton Utilities and PC Tools software programs by scaring them with misleading information about the health of their computers. Symantec has said those claims are without merit.

It was not immediately clear how the source code might help the case. And one of the attorneys working with plaintiff James Gross said that he did not welcome assistance from the Indian hackers.

Saturday, January 14, 2012

The Sydney Morning Herald invited its readers to contribute to the creation of a new art form, a "crowd-sourced" novel featuring a mysterious necklace, which was to be published over the next three weeks.

The first chapter was published on Boxing Day (December 26) in the newspaper's Summer Herald section, on smh.com.au and on the Herald's tablet app.

Readers were invited to read that chapter and then write the next one, submitting it within two days.

One contribution was selected and published as the next chapter (on the tablet app and online only, but still, what a great idea). The editor -- Michael Duffy -- envisaged a novel nine chapters in length, which would appear as an evolving serial for three weeks, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

There were rules. Each chapter had to be set in a different suburb, be strongly described, and be between 1500 and 2000 words. The only necessary linking element was the necklace introduced in the first chapter. Each subsequent chapter had to explain how the necklace got to be in a new suburb -- given or sold, stolen or inherited, perhaps. The chapters could move back and forth in time.

And lo, the public responded. The final chapter has just been published, and it's a humdinger, starring Cate Blanchett, no less.

You can read the completed novel HERE Just click each chapter in order.

Friday, January 13, 2012

And can you blame him? "Mississippi" is a lot easier to type than to write.

Joking aside, there is an interesting discussion developing on the internet, starting with milestones in publishing (such as the first typewritten manuscript), and focusing on word processors.

So, who was the first to produce a manuscript on a word processor?

No one knows, according to a fascinating article in the NYT by Jennifer Schuessler. But there are plenty of guesses, mostly involving science fiction writers -- which is only logical, when you think about it. Frank Herbert could well have been the first to submit a book on floppy disks, but in the absence of the disks themselves, let alone the data on them, it is impossible to prove.

(For that matter, it could have been yours truly. In 1990 I produced She Was a Sister Sailor on a Brother rather like the one pictured above, and sent it to the publisher -- Mystic Seaport -- on floppy disks, which were a lot cheaper to mail than a typewritten manuscript. They had to borrow an identical machine to read the confounded things.)

In her NYT story, Jennifer Schuessler tells us about Matthew G. Kirschenbaum, a university professor who is hot on the trail of the first word processor-produced manuscript, according to a recent lecture at the New York Public Library, saucily titled "Stephen King's Wang." (A Wang was King's first word processor.) Mr. Kirschenbaum also collects old word processors, and has a novel method of cleaning mother boards -- by putting them through the rinse cycle of the dishwasher!

According to Ms. Schuessler, the lecture was drawn from Mr. Kirschenbaum’s book Track Changes: A Literary History of Word Processing, which Harvard University Press is set to publish in 2013, or as soon as he can finish tapping it out on his iBuyPower 64-bit laptop.

NEW YORK (AP) — The author of "Captain Underpants" is joining the digital age and bringing back his million-selling series after a six-year hiatus.

Scholastic Inc. announced Thursday that e-editions of two graphic novels by Dav Pilkey, "The Adventures of Super Diaper Baby" and "Super Diaper Baby 2," will come out at the end of January. The releases will include deleted scenes and material about the making of the books, spinoffs of the "Captain Underpants" stories.

The proliferation of iPads, Nooks, Kindle Fires and other color devices have made publishers and authors increasingly willing to put illustrated works in electronic format.

Scholastic also announced that two new "Captain Underpants" books are arriving, the first since 2006 and continuing the adventures of schoolmates George Beard and Harold Hutchins and the principal they turn into an underdressed superhero.

Monday, January 9, 2012

I've been having a fascinating conversation with eNovelist Shayne Parkinson about reading books on tablets, which offer all those enticing (and very distracting) apps.

She loves her tablet, she says, and when she reads, she just reads (more self-control than I have, I strongly suspect). When she is not reading, she can use her tablet for a multitude of extras -- writing notes to herself, checking e-mail, updating a grocery shopping list, or just as a plain old phone.

Now I find on bookcatcher.com that a publishing company has held a survey of readers asking if they would be prepared to pay more, just to be able to read a book on a gadget that offers all those extras listed by Shayne. The company is Cathedral Rock Publishing. It's a small survey, but surprisingly positive. And yes, eBook readers strongly support gadgets with additionals, such as audio and video, and are willing to pay more to get what they want.

It's a fish, a very small American fish. Also known as moss bunker, bunker, and pogy, it has been harvested for fertilizer since time immemorial.

Indeed, the name comes from the Algonquin word munnawhat, which means fertilizer.

Despite someone having fun in the food section of the Wikipedia entry, it is not generally considered to be edible, though it was once experimentally canned as "Ocean Trout." Instead, it is harvested by the million for fertilizer and fish meal -- and the Omega fish oil that you swallow in capsule form for your health. It's greatest importance, however, is its place in the food chain. Like krill for giant whales, it is a necessary part of the diet of larger species. Removing menhaden from the sea is another step in the wrecking of our planet.

This message is explored in a very well-reviewed book about this little fish, called The Most Important Fish in the Sea: Menhaden and America, by H. Bruce Franklin. It is worth hunting up the entry on Amazon, if only just to read the extremely well-written review by Mark McDonough.

In fact, whales played a surprisingly important part in the history of menhaden. As the great whales were "fished" out, reducing huge catches of menhaden as an alternative for lubricant oil became quite an industry, and schooners called "moss bunkers" became quite a common sight on the eastern coasts of America. As there was no refrigeration, the menhaden were just allowed to rot, so the moss bunkers could be smelled quite a long time before they came into sight. Working on them could not have been fun.

From maritime historian Bill Bunting:

There is a tale of a certain 3-masted schooner which loaded a cargoof "fish scrap" -- putrified processed pogy, pogy being an oilyindustrial fish once unsuccessfully canned as "Ocean Trout" -- atPromised Land, on Eastern Long Island, for Norfolk, where the maggotyscrap was to became a component of fertilizer. Initially the stenchwas all but overpowering to the schooner's people, but evidently thehuman olfactory system is designed to shut down in self-defense whenconfronted with an extreme situation, and by the time port was madethe stench did not seem all that bad. But this proved to be anillusion when the captain, wife, and daughter boarded a street caronly to have the other occupants depart post haste.

Saturday, January 7, 2012

There are some very odd names around these days, but no odder than they were back in the nineteenth century in whaling New England. Undoubtedly because of the stern Old Testament background of many of the prominent families, names like Elijah, Uriah, Obed and Gideon abounded, while girls called Asenath and Azubah were common (though Mary was hugely popular, as was Sarah).

Well, those whaling mothers would have blinked at the list of names that were not allowed to be used in New Zealand, rejected because (a) the name is considered "undesiarable in the public interest" (b) it may cause offence (c) is too long -- meaning more than 100 characters (d) is an official title.

The most popular rejected name was Justice (or any spelling of the word)

Next came "Royal" and "Prince."

Well, good heavens above -- those names also feature heavily in lists of whaling crews and captains, a prominent fellow being Captain Prince Sherman, who was popular in all the ports where he landed. A relative of his, another Prince Sherman, did not have quite such a wonderful reputation. In fact, he jumped ship, and settled in New Zealand.

Then there was Royal Sherman. And that comes from looking at just one family. (There was a Zoeth Sherman, too.)

And how about all the babies who named after the ship! The first "Chelsea," in fact, was little Chelsea Smith, born on board the New London sealer/whaler Chelsea, in appalling weather in appalling seas in the sub-Antarctic south.

And guess where Helen Herschel Sherman was born. No, it's not a ship; it's a place.

Top ten rejected names:

Justice
Princess
King
Prince
Royal
Duke
Bishop
Major
J
Lucifer

Well, I can think of quite a few little boys who could very aptly be called Lucifer ....

In between you'll hear individual presentations from the major etailers--Russ Grandinetti at Amazon; Theresa Horner at BN; Michael Tamblyn at Kobo--and the first conference presentation from new Bookish ceo Carolyn Marks.

There's futurist and author David Houle, and Oren Teicher from the ABA and booksellers from Politics and Prose and RJ Julia on The Bookstore Renaissance and new bookselling business model experiments underway. For original research, there will be new presentations from James Mcquivey at Forrester; Kelly Gallagher at Bowker PubTrack; Giovanni Bonfanti at A.T. Kearney; and Jack McKeown and Tom Thompson at Verso.

Plus five vertical tracks offer experts from throughout the publishing industry and beyond on technology, marketing, social media, ebook basics, the changing role of agents, global markets, illustrated books, libraries and more.

DBW has grown into a three-day extravaganza--beginning with our own Publishers Launch Conference going deep into the fast-growing digital children's market now that color devices have taken hold.

Best of all, since we are co-presenters of DBW, Publishers Lunch readers can still take advantage of a big discount on tickets--the best available price on the market. Use our code PUBLUNCH12 and you will save $470 off the full conference ticket price.

Enroll for Monday's Children's Publishing Goes Digital at the same time and you'll save another $135 on the bundle.

There's always a big wave of registrations in January, and the show is headed towards a complete sellout, so click through now if you plan to join us.

It's already another fascinating year for Barnes & Noble, which surprised Wall Street with a number of post-holiday announcements. The success of their Nook Tablet, "which has exceeded expectations," came at some cost to their less expensive eInk device, "with a shortfall in the expected sales of NOOK Simple Touch." They say "the company over-anticipated the growth in consumer demand for single purpose black-and-white reading devices this holiday." Primarily as a result of that Simple Touch shortfall, BN reduced their guidance to investors, projecting fiscal year sales of between $7.0 billion and $7.2 billion, EBITDA of $150 to $180 million, and a loss per share of between $1.40 to $1.10 a share.

I personally find this depressing, as it means that people want gadgets with distracting apps, which in my candid opinion is no way to read a book. Most serious readers I know don't even want to be interrupted by an oldfashioned phone.

The good news is that B&N holiday print book sales rose by 4%. Overall, however, it doesn't look good for traditional publishing on paper. Print sales tracked by Nielsen Bookscan declined over 9% in 2011.

Thursday, January 5, 2012

I always make a point of scanning my passport before heading overseas, and keeping a copy on my laptop. The same applies to any paper visas.

This isn't just because of the risk of theft or loss. When China was first opened to Western tourists, we were in a group heading for the Tibetan border. At the Canton Trade Fair, a man who was with our small party borrowed all our paper visa documents for photocopying on one of the display machines. He gave us all a second copy, and sent a couple to officials back home. The rest of us thought he was being paranoid, but the copies turned out to be very useful indeed, when the originals were mislaid by the courier.

Anyway, a Canadian man has benefited from the same kind of precaution.

Before Christmas, he arrived at the US border to find he'd forgotten his passport. Yet he managed to cross the border into the US using a copy that he had scanned on to his iPad.

Martin Reisch, from Montreal, said he told the official that he was heading to Vermont to deliver Christmas presents.

Creative New Zealand has made community grant funding available to hold at least 50 book/author events throughout the country, a key part of NZ Book Month’s community outreach.

Annabel Langbein (pictured right) is the new celebrity reading role model who joins noted film maker Sir Peter Jackson as one of the two named so far.

Bestselling cookbook author Annabel says she is delighted to be part of NZ Book Month. “The more time I spend promoting my books overseas the more I realise that the books we produce here in New Zealand are the equal of those from anywhere else on the planet.

"It's important to take this time to celebrate the richness they bring to our world,” she believes.

Booksellers New Zealand’s Project Manager Megan Dunn was delighted the popular Annabel will be a face of NZ Book Month. “Annabel’s involvement will highlight the diversity of New Zealand book genres,” she believes.

LONDON (Reuters) - Three of the five 2011 Costa Book Award categories were won by debut authors Tuesday, while Booker Prize winner Julian Barnes lost out to Andrew Miller for the best novel honor.

Poet and first-time biographer Matthew Hollis scooped the Costa biography award for "Now All Roads Leads to France: The Last Years of Edward Thomas" about the war poet who died in action during World War One.

Christie Watson, a children's nurse, was named 2011 debut novelist for "Tiny Sunbirds Far Away" about a Nigerian family forced to leave a comfortable urban life for poverty in the countryside.

And Moira Young won the children's book category for her first novel "Blood Red Road" set in a lawless future land where Saba sets out to find her missing twin brother.

In the novel category, Andrew Miller won with his sixth novel "Pure," beating Barnes whose "The Sense of an Ending" was the Booker Prize winner in October.

And poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy picked up the poetry prize with her latest collection "The Bees."

The winner of each category receives a cheque for 5,000 pounds ($7,800). The overall winner, who earns a further 30,000 pounds, is announced on January 24

The sales machine that is James Patterson continues in the e-book era.

NEW YORK (AP) — The Hachette Book Group announced Wednesday that e-book sales for the prolific novelist now top 5 million, with 2 million coming in just the past seven months.

Patterson hit the 1 million mark for e-books in July 2010, making him among the first authors to reach that milestone. Patterson also is thriving on paper. Hachette noted that hardcover and paperback sales for his work in 2011 topped 4.7 million copies, as tracked by Nielsen BookScan, which compiles around 75 percent of the non e-book market.

Patterson publishes several books a year and his best-sellers, many of them written with others, including "Kill Alex Cross" and "Now You See Her."

And he truly is a machine. Not only does he have a clutch of hard-working collaborators he manages with an all-seeing eye, resulting in the production of several bestsellers a year, but he totally dominates the publishing department of Little-Brown that is dedicated to putting out and pushing the results of their combined efforts.

It would be possible to say that he has changed the face of publishing as much as Amazon.

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

It's a deal that also includes Oxbow’s The David Brown Book Company headquartered in Oakville, Ct.

The acquisition will broaden Casemate’s list beyond military history as it adds Oxbow—a leading U.K. publisher and distributor in the fields of academic archaeology and ancient and medieval history—as well as David Brown, an importer and reseller of books in the academic disciplines of archaeology, ancient history, philosophy, theology and other related fields.

According to Casemate, going forward, each unit of the new group will retain its brand and position in the market, and there will be a “pooling” of resources in the production of books and in sales and marketing. Oxbow proprietary titles and those of Oxbow’s and David Brown Book Company’s distribution clients will also gain access to Casemate’s e-book program.

Casemate president David Farnsworth said the acquisition gives Casemate the chance “to build a new kind of specialist publishing and distribution company,” that is positioned to take advantage of the different selling options that are now available ranging from "e-books to mail-order, from selling at conferences and society meetings to selling to large chain store retailers and everything in between. By marketing to and selling in both the trade and the academic market, both constituent companies will benefit from access to and the expertise in each other’s traditional markets leading to growth for both.”